Rufus Edmisten Event at Wilson Library, Edmisten's Thoughts About Nixon, September 20, 2012

Rufus Edmisten Event at Wilson Library, Edmisten's Thoughts About Nixon, September 20, 2012

This event was an interview of Rufus Edmisten by Chancellor Holden Thorp marking the donation of the Rufus Edmisten Papers to the Southern Historical Collection. This clip is about Edmisten's thoughts about Nixon's actions regarding the Watergate scandal.

Edmisten, Rufus, 1941-

September 20, 2012

Thorp, H. Holden, 1964-; Michalak, Sarah

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

audio/mp4

English

Sound

https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/items/show/7903

“Here’s another theory I have too. When they [the White House tapes] were discovered, I’ve been asked a gazillion times, what if Nixon just said, ‘I’m going to destroy them?’ Now he’d have a little flack out of that. You might have had a possibility of somebody saying you destroyed government property. I think he could’ve burned them—bit of flack for a while. He said ‘they’re mine; they’re personal. If I owe the government some money for the use of the recorders and this and that, fine.’ But the truth about the man is that he had such a warped sense of his posterity and his innate worth to the world that he couldn’t do it! He couldn’t bring himself to do it. But I’d have been burning those babies quick!” *laughter* “And you know the trouble about it, Chancellor, he continued to lie until his death. Observe the article that [Bob] Woodward and [Carl] Bernstein wrote on this last 40th anniversary , they proved beyond a doubt that the man kept lying about that he had never committed any crimes. My god! In every state and territory in the union, it is a felony to pay off people to cover up crimes! My god. You learned that in the third grade.” *laughter*

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